I have to admit being surprised by a Wall Street Journal story today predicting voice-activated digital assistants (like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri) will have a disruptive influence on the internet and online commerce [“The Next Big Threat to Consumer Brands (Yes, Amazon’s Behind It)“].
One executive quoted in the story predicts voice will have as big an impact as, well, the internet itself.
“I believe voice is as big as the internet—and Google—when it came,” L’Oréal SA’s Chief Digital Officer Lubomira Rochet told the Journal.
The article focuses on how online shopping will be affected, but it’s implications are much broader.
In the next five years, half of searches on the web will be done via voice, estimates Sebastien Szczepaniak, a former Amazon executive who now heads e-commerce for Nestlé SA, the world’s biggest packaged-foods company. Consulting firm Capgemini says voice-assistant users will spend 18% of their total expenses via voice assistants in the next three years, up from 3% currently.
“Of all the disruptions that are taking place in all the things technology is bringing into our space, voice is among the most disruptive,” said Graeme Pitkethly, chief financial officer of Unilever PLC. “In digital investment this is our biggest focus.”
And that’s what surprises me. I’ve seen voice control as of limited utility, since there are so many settings in which giving voice commands would be difficult, impolite, or disturbing to others, even when they work as expected. I’m just much more comfortable with a keyboard, or touch screen, which seem to offer much more precise control when moving through digital space.
But these observers see it very differently, and they’re betting real money on the voice transition and scrambling to develop strategies to deal with it.
Their concern is that digital assistants like Alexa typically offer consumers a more limited number of options compared to what they would see visiting a web site.
Unlike in stores or online, where an array of brands get plenty of exposure, voice-search assistants like Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa often steer shoppers to a single product, usually selected by an algorithm with no input from the sellers. That isn’t a big problem now, as voice searches account for a sliver of purchases. But it could be.
So what do you think? Is the future of the internet made up of people constantly mumbling into their digital assistants and accepting what they have to offer? Where are things moving?
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I wonder if they have given enough thoughts to foreign accents.
Even now the pay by phone function of banks do not recognize my ‘current’ balance, so I have to say ‘statement’ balance to avoid humans taking over. I’m sure the machine will keep learning, but it will be a lot of humbug for foreign users until the machine detects your voice correctly.
What about larynx and vocal cord cancer survivers?
Really, why not touch screen?
the 20somethings I know use voice commands with their cell phones all the time.
Do they still constantly text? It’s interesting that people used to talk on the phone more but search online with keyboards or touch screens?
My experience with Siri is of the mixed variety. It is a work in progress which may never be perfected: it fails too often in distinguishing between similarly sounding words. It will not be replacing my keyboard anytime soon.
I’ll tell you the problem with voice commands based on a personal experience this morning. In voice to text this morning, the phrase “doing it regardless” got changed to “doing the Greek goddess.” This text was going to an employee. Good thing I caught it or I would have been hearing from the sexual harassment police! Voice is worse than autocorrect, and I don’t know how anyone can count on its accurancy for anything.
I have a hunch, Ian, that you are like commenter, “John” — whose experience with ‘voice commands’ and ‘search’ is almost exclusively based on “Apple products.” Apple is FAR behind the curve when it comes to voice. It’s comical that people like John think ‘Siri’ is some technological innovation.
In fact, Motorola’s Android phones had smooth, functional voice commands at least 3-4 years — before ‘Siri’ became less of a “cheap knockoff” — and more of a practical way to interact with an iPhone mobile device.
The ‘Apple’ disciples are therefore, unaware of the overwhelming number of people who have been ‘talking to’ their electronics for nearly a decade. Amazon Alexa and Google Home have been in a heated market-share battle for that “speech-saavy” group for quite awhile.
Apple, meanwhile, finally released their “Homepod” on February 9, 2018. Better late than never, I suppose.